Suggestions for guide download errors in Media Center caused by the BITS service

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As I have previously written here, there have been some guide download problems in Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 after applying  Update Rollup 2. 

How to diagnose guide download errors

You can use the following steps to look at the Application event log to try to determine the root cause of the guide download failure:

  1. Click on the Start menu, choose Run and type eventvwr.exe
  2. Open the Application event log
  3. Find any errors or warnings with the source name of Media Center Scheduler

If you find that the errors are caused by the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) not being detected as installed or being configured incorrectly, the following sets of steps can be used to resolve the issues in most cases.

How to fix BITS configuration errors

Various errors can occur when BITS interfaces are not registered or the registry settings are corrupted.

To fix this error, repair the BITS service by using the following steps:

  1. Download and install the Windows XP SP2 support tools
  2. Click on the Start menu, choose Run and type cmd
  3. Run "C:\Program Files\Support Tools\bitsadmin.exe" /util /repairservice /force from the command prompt

Note: the above command line assumes that you installed the XP SP2 support tools to the default location. You will need to adjust the path to bitsadmin.exe as appropriate if you installed the support tools to a non-default path

How to enable the BITS service if it is disabled

This error occurs when the BITS service is disabled, does not exist, has been deleted from the services application, was stopped while download was in progress, or if any service that BITS depends on failed or was deleted.

To fix this error, enable the BITS service by using the following steps:

  1. Click on the Start menu, choose Run and type services.msc
  2. In the list of services, right-click Background Intelligent Transfer Service, and then click Properties
  3. In the Startup type list, select Manual and then click OK

If these steps do not resolve the problem, you may need to enable the services that BITS depends on by doing the following:

  1. Click on the Start menu, choose Run and type services.msc
  2. In the list of services, right-click Background Intelligent Transfer Service, and then click Properties
  3. In the Background Intelligent Transfer Service Properties dialog box, click the Dependencies tab
  4. For each service listed under This service depends on the following system components, select Manual in the Startup type list and then click OK to enable the service